Stolen
by nonsequiturvy
Summary: In which Regina learns that you can't steal what's already been given to you. Enchanted Forest, Missing Year.
It starts with the candlesticks.

Ironically, Regina might never have missed them if it weren't for the boy, with his shy request for a storybook that his papa could read him at bedtime, and her subsequent discovery that the library's passageways are not nearly as well-lit as she'd remembered them to be.

Muttering death threats for all their new house guests, she pulls a bit of fire to her fingertips, and narrowly avoids setting aflame the assortment of fables that she'd chosen for Roland and his insufferable (not to mention unquestionably guilty) father.

Still, a stolen torchlight or two is hardly worth the scene she'd so _love_ to make about it, and Roland's joyfully overwhelmed expression upon receiving a book three times his size is enough to distract her from the transgressions of others.

She supposes she'll let it slide this once, so long as a few candlesticks, easily replaced, are the extent of things to mysteriously wander out of sight.

But it doesn't stop there.

And nobody else in the whole damn castle seems to notice but her.

A doorknob here, a quill and parchment there—knickknacks, really, hardly of much value if gold is what this burglar's after, and it's not as though Regina has any special place to be, or important people to write to (if only reaching Henry were as simple as sending a letter by raven). But it's a great inconvenience to her all the same to realize their absence, and guess at the man who would dare to test her so.

It's the last straw, when Regina finds her table settings oddly short a fork and knife at dinner time one midsummer evening. As the boy's father strides casually by, cheerfully inquiring whether anything is the matter, she presses her lips into a very bad impression of a smile and stubbornly saws at a porkchop with the dull edge of her spoon, plotting silently all the while.

Snow might have been foolish enough to welcome thieves into their home and presume them free of ill intentions, but Regina knows better; she knows her heart with its charred-black center, and she suspects that this man, this _Robin_ of supposedly noble birth, is not without his own claims to such darkness.

He is, after all, a thief. He's taken what's hers.

And she's determined not to let him get away with it.

She starts with the candlesticks he'd spared in his careful pickpocketing through the private-most corridors of her castle, places he has no business trespassing on, things he has no business touching (the key to her missing doorknob has vanished as well, and it galls Regina to think of the laughter that must have crinkled his eyes when he lifted the chain right off of her neck).

She weaves warnings into the surrounding air, installing unpleasant surprises to greet any mischievous hands intent on taking what doesn't belong to them—stunning spells, bursts of fire, shocking jolts meant to paralyze if not cause permanent harm (it wouldn't do, of course, to leave the boy without a father too).

She does not stop there.

It soon becomes clear to her that he's no interest in the money. His terribly feigned innocence whenever yet another something takes its unexpected leave (the glass she's _just_ poured abruptly emptied of its wine, her slice of pie suddenly missing a bite she had not taken herself) indicates as much to her: that her ire is in fact what he's after, more than any reward for the things that he's stolen.

So Regina neglects the castle's fine china just as he does, its twelve-foot tapestries and gold-framed portraits, Leopold's crown room, countless treasure vaults. She leaves her jewelry unattended on her vanity, casting spells instead to deter the thief from getting handsy with her comb, a pile of hairpins, and every other trivial item she can identify that might possibly be of interest to him.

Robin Hood looks entirely too pleased about something when she arrives for breakfast the following morning, her curls down and loose and hopelessly wild, despite her best efforts at taming them without a brush or a single hairpin at her disposal.

One by one, each of the various trinkets she'd sought to secure begin to disappear without a trace or sign of a struggle, the thief somehow slipping past strongholds and finding loopholes in her spells with such apparent ease that she wonders whether he doesn't carry a magic all his own.

Regina's strangely reminded of the cheap magician's tricks she would shamelessly employ in order to win Henry over as a child, unearthing quarters and paper clips in his ear, pulling his favorite grey-and-red-striped scarf from out of a fist.

Maybe she and the thief are not so insupportable in their differences, and maybe she would be charmed by his winking boldness, his willingness to engage her where the rest of the castle would rather look the other way, if she hadn't already resolved to be so goddamn irritated with him.

The things he'd nicked turn up days later in the most unexpected of places—her ink bottle nestled between the salt and pepper, a potted jade plant (with one of its stems now broken, she's annoyed to discover) bookending the special shelf she's reserved for Roland's favorite stories.

There is, of course, one not altogether surprising exception: it appears that the thief has decided to keep her entire collection of hairpieces for himself.

Resigned to leaving her locks free-flowing, Regina twists what she can around the nape of her neck and tries not to notice the interest he seems to have taken in the state of her hair each morning.

The candlesticks are the last to stage their reappearance, late one night as she makes her way back to the library. The thief has actually deigned to return them to their original location, and they blaze anew from their wall sconces, throwing light and shadow together in a playful struggle across the paved stone flooring.

She soon realizes there's something purposeful about the way he's positioned them, illuminating certain corridors while neglecting others, forming a beacon that guides her farther and farther from where she'd meant to go as she follows the flames like a trail of breadcrumbs.

She's already guessed where he's chosen to lead her when the formerly wayward doorknob flickers into full view, a delicate silver chain dangling from the key slotted and turned in the lock.

It had once been her most prized armory, this room, crammed to the ceiling with deadly weapons and dark enchanted objects, well-kept at the height of her tyranny and thirst for vengeance against Snow White. It has since accumulated three decades of dust, but still it remains, a hidden source of comfort that she is not without ways of protecting herself.

Leave it to the thief, then, to uncover her most heavily guarded secrets, to smile as though greeting an old friend and boldly disregard the dangers to be found here (in _her_ ), filling the space instead with candlelight, and stolen mementos, and a table set for two.

Regina can only stare at the feast before her, heaping platters of food, large twin goblets of maroon-red wine, with forks and knives to spare besides. A single bud of jade acts as the centerpiece, putting down new roots in a teacup rimmed with soil (so he'd had his eye on the china after all).

The thief stands amongst the pilfered goods, watching her with something like caution, and something like hope, in every line of his body.

His smile has lost the smugness she's grown so accustomed to seeing there, half-formed now in shyness instead. Regina's almost too stunned, against her better judgment, to register the words he begins speaking in earnest—his apologies, if she would please forgive the intrusion, but he wondered that she might join him for a meal, away from prying eyes, in a place where she feels safe?

A folded bit of parchment has been perched against the teacup like a makeshift place card, bearing her name—lest there be any confusion about who this seat has been reserved for— _Regina_ , fearlessly penned and freed of all its titles, proper or put upon or otherwise.

As if it's all he needs to know of her.

A smile of her own, or at least some wondrous approximation of one, threatens to show itself before she's able to suppress the urge (yet another thing he's been planning to steal from her, then, and she marvels at how easily she's let him).

Hope seems to outweigh any notion of proceeding with caution now, and he takes a step toward her.

Recklessly, she stays.

He reaches for her, and her hand slips, somehow finding its way to his.

She thinks she ought to put up more of a resistance, that a thief is a thief and this one has a lot to learn about helping himself to a Queen's belongings, but then he's tugging her closer, a tendril of hair suddenly caught by his thumb, and she doesn't recall giving him permission to do that either, but she finds that she simply can't be bothered to care anymore.

* * *

 **A|N:** I posted this ages ago on Tumblr but thought I'd add it here for completeness. Who else misses the Missing Year? Because I do :(


End file.
